Film / The Devil's Backbone

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It is the Spanish Civil War. Casares and Carmen operate a small orphanage in a remote part of Spain, along with the groundskeeper Jacinto and a teacher, Conchita. Casares and Carmen keep a large cache of gold to help support the treasury of the Republican loyalists, making this remote site a frequent target of Franco's troops; an unexploded bomb waits to be defused in the orphanage's courtyard.

When a small boy named Carlos arrives there, he believes that he is only staying until his father returns from the war. However, Carlos is about to learn that more than the living dwell here, as he starts seeing an apparition he cannot explain, and hears tales of a boy named Santi who disappeared the day the bomb showed up.

Death by Irony: Doubling as Death by Materialism. After being thrown into the pool beneath the orphanage and dragged down by Santi, Jacinto is weighted down by the bars of gold in his pockets — the treasure he's spent years searching for.

Defiant to the End: After running into him in the desert, Conchita refuses to apologize to Jacinto and lets him kill her instead.

Downer Ending: The teachers are dead, and the children have no choice but to venture out into the desert for help — where they'll most likely die as well, forgotten by all. More sad when Jaimee and Carlos are both seen in Pan's Labyrinth...where they both die. Del Toro confirmed it is them at that.

Near the beginning, the headmistress shows the children a picture of a bunch of Ice age hunters killing a mammoth with spears, and comments that, back in the day, people had to cooperate and work in groups in order to survive. Later, the kids manage to overpower physically superior Jacinto by outnumbering him and attacking him with improvised spears.

When the characters are preparing to leave the orphanage, Carmen remarks that her artificial leg feels heavier than usual. It is because she hid the gold in it.

Genre Savvy: Unlike characters in most Hollywood ghost stories, it actually occurs to Carlos to simply ask the ghost what it is he wants. He wants Jacinto.

According to Word of God on the (American release) DVD commentary, he is still in an existential loop after the end of the film. Also, the opening narration poses the question, what is a ghost? and one of the following lines suggests an insect trapped in amber. So presumably, all ghosts exist in that way.

People Jars: Pickled fetuses with the titular deformitynote The condition is actually called spina bifida. It wasn't properly understood in the medical world until the mid- to late '30s. Despite it having a real, physical cause, in small Spanish towns it was still considered a sign from God that the children were not meant to live or that their parents had some grave sin on their souls. Hence the name, devil's backbone.

Precocious Crush: Jaime has a wholesome crush on Conchita. However, there is a less-than-wholesome example as well: Jacinto had a less-than-wholesome crush on his own teacher, Carmen, when he was a student.

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